Dave Mell Blues Band

Performance date: June 1, 2016

Published on Jun 1, 2016
Dave Mell Blues Bands performs live in The Sound Room at WEEU, 830 AM in Reading, PA. Set includes “Burning in My Heart” at 0:00, “Mr. Right” at 6:10, and “Living Like Strangers” at 11:04.

Extended Audio Session Below:

The Dave Mell Blues band features male and female vocals, all styles of blues, r & b and originals. Unique arrangements and original interpretation of classic rock, blues, and r & b standards are their specialty.

New Dave Mell Blues Band CD features original music

Thursday June 9, 2016 12:01 AMBy Don Botch
Guitarist Dave Mell has learned a few tricks of the trade over 30-plus years of performing locally.

For instance, he knows that if you want to play original material, you need to be a little sneaky about it. You should never announce it in advance, or you risk losing your audience.

“When you get up in front of an audience and say, ‘Now we’re going to do one of our own songs,’ the dance floor will just clear right off,” he said. “I’ve seen other bands do it.”

A few years ago, he began mixing his hook-filled original composition “Living Like Strangers” into a medley of popular cover tunes his Dave Mell Blues Band performs, and darn if audiences didn’t take to it.

“As long as they didn’t know what it was,” he said, “they’re swept along with the tide.”

He’d announce after the fact that it was an original, and they’d come up to him at set breaks and ask to purchase the CD it was on. Then he’d have to sheepishly reveal it wasn’t on either of the band’s releases.

That situation now has been remedied. “Living Like Strangers” is the title track of a 19-song CD released earlier this spring.

The song, as well as the three other originals from the CD, will be in the mix for three big outdoor shows the band has coming up this weekend and next: the opener of the Mifflin Community Library’s Summer Concerts Series on Sunday at 6 p.m. in Mohnton Memorial Park; the Berks Blues, Brews & BBQ Festival on June 18 as part of the Apple Dumping Festival; and the Berks-A-Palooza Summer Jam on June 19 at the Temple Fire Company.

“It’s not as bluesy as you would expect,” Mell said of the title track, “but it is melodic, and it’s loaded with harmonies.”

The same could probably be said of the rest of the new album, as well as the band’s typical set lists, which tend to be evenly divided between blues, classic rock and rhythm and blues.

“As musicians, we need to stretch out a little bit and cover other things beyond straight blues,” Mell explained. “We love straight blues, but we’ve got to show we are capable of more.”

The new CD contains covers ranging from Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Stevie Wonder and B.B. King tunes to lesser-known songs by the likes of Savoy Brown, Canned Heat, T Bone Burnett and early Fleetwood Mac. Mell traced his interest in those latter artists to his days of working in record stores and collecting vinyl.

“I have all these songs in my head that I’ve heard from other sources that never got overplayed on the radio,” he said.